Steemshop launches to life with an upgraded system!steemCreated with Sketch.

In just one month @steemshop has proven itself to be an active & steadily growing account where people can buy or sell anything they like using Steem or Steem Dollars. We are now ready to implement our Steemshop roadmap.

Metrics

There were two posts announcing the arrival of Steemshop one month ago

In the @samstonehill account the announcement received 233 upvotes from the community.

@steemshopnews - weekly news updates, including features on the best products & services of the week, top sale of the week, milestones achieved and proposed future developments.

@steemshopinfo - in this account you will find our guidelines to successfully buy and sell in the steemshop. You will also find the answers to commonly asked questions. All aspects of the shop's functionality will be covered here and it is important that you consult this account before posting in the shop.

@steemshopescrow - the final account will be the all important escrow holding account. This account will be the intermediary account between the two trading parties, holding the Steem or Steem Dollars to ensure there is no foul play.

The escrow account will be transparent to all.

The seller can see that the payment has been deposited into the escrow account before posting the product. Once the buyer has confirmed receipt, payment will be released from the escrow account to the seller.

Our escrow account will be overseen by reputable members of the Steemit community.

As the marketplace evolves, so too will our escrow system.

It is strongly advised that whenever a physical product is sent, it is handled by courier or registered post with a tracking number. @steemshop will not be held liable for any disputes. Stick to our simple guidelines listed in the @steemshopinfo account and you will be unlikely to experience problems.

Here is a clear visual breakdown of the new Steemshop accounts and their functionality.

Problem

As the marketplace expands, more and more categories will be required, fragmenting steemshop into hundreds of accounts. And this will be both confusing & impractical.

Solution

Limit the @steemshop accounts to main categories and expand the marketplace into our full service website, listing as many categories as required and growing organically through demand.

Objectives

To create a thriving marketplace where products & services can be easily bought or sold using Steem or Steem Dollars.

To build awareness around the great functionality of Steem & its blockchain as a method of payment. Instant and free transactions utilising simple username account keys makes this the perfect next generation coin for marketplace exchanges.

To eliminate the need for selling Steem for Bitcoin in order to make our online purchases.

To encourage the growth of other such platforms which utilise Steem and its blockchain.

To introduce users of the Steemshop website to the Steemit platform where they can earn more Steem with zero financial investment.

Platform Development

At this stage there is no funding required. We have an amazing team enthusiastically working on concept art, category development, marketing strategy and management of the resteeming process, required to get your posts into the correct Steemshop account as soon as possible.

When the marketplace expands to a point where it is no longer feasible to easily display all categories on Steemit we will migrate to our dedicated Steemshop website.

The Steemshop website will have simple functionality, high end visual design and a Steem/Steem Dollar payment system, all of which will aid the success of this unique marketplace.

Once active on the Steemshop site, new users will be encouraged to increase their shopping potential by joining Steemit and making more Steem.

The growth potential for Steemit is clear.

Steemshop Website Concept Art

We are working on a number of concepts currently which will be revealed to you soon...

What's next?

We have prepared a roadmap which includes the launch of the Steemshop website.

For now we would very like to keep this marketplace firmly within the Steemit platform.

We will soon be listing the Steemshop codes of conduct, detailed information on how the escrow account works, terms & conditions and individual articles in the @steemshopinfo account covering the following questions:

What is Steemshop?

How do I start using Steemshop?

Which Steemshop accounts should I be following to stay up to date?

How does the payment system work?

How do I give feedback or suggestions to Steemshop?

We welcome all suggestions from the community and are keen to hear your feedback in order that we can improve this service together.

Let us work together now to build this concept into a thriving Steem powered marketplace!

So my friends....

Take the weekend off to go through all that junk in your attic before creating your sale posts following these simple guidelines:

Clear photographs from multiple angles (2 minimum)

Name, age, materials and any further relevant description of item(s)

Dimensions in cm & weight in grams/kilos

Asking price in Steem or Steem Dollars (or both) - with an indication if you are willing to negotiate (WTN)

Location of item(s) - in order that delivery/shipping costs can be calculated. At this stage the buyer & seller must agree on method of delivery and be sure to keep all relevant documentation. @steemshop and associated accounts will not be held liable for any disputes.

Be sure to use the #steemshop tag as one of your five tags and we will resteem you into the Steemshop.

If you are seeking a particular item, be sure to give as much information as possible (ideally with photo references) and the price you are prepared to pay for it, in Steem and Steem Dollars.

If we feel that you are missing crucial information we will not necessarily resteem your post into the shop. Instead, we will contact you, outlining what we feel to be missing and after you have made the adjustments, your post will be resteemed into the relevant Steemshop category.

Every successful entry to the Steemshop will be upvoted by us and shared in the #steemshop feed on steemit.chat

We also have a Steemshop feed in Discord where you will be automatically reposted in the correct category to ensure maximum coverage.

If you wish to make donations to our amazing team please send them to the @steemshop account.

The concept of multiple tags is confusing, it's a bit all over the place and the shopping experience on steemit is not good. There is also an escrow at the blockchain level so the escrow system you propose seems a bit backward.
I think @steemshop is a good initiative but the way you are doing it is not going to get much traction.

My advice if you want to work on a marketplace is to either build your own site (like you suggested) or code a simple market that can be integrated in steemit
For example there is the market page https://steemit.com/market we could have the https://steemit.com/shop page.

Thanks very much for your positive comment. We are just doing what feels like the right thing to do for Steemit and the currency Steem. It will take some work to fine tune everything but in time this will be an awesome steem powered marketplace

Their platform is quite developed already, and they are hopefully releasing version 2 of their platform soon. The biggest problem with Openbazaar is that it is only (currently) able to use bitcoin for trasactions and this is very limiting right now with the transaction delays and so on.

It seems to me that integrating STEEM with that platform or since it is open source developing the Steem Shop platform with the Openbazaar platform would be a win/win for both groups. And a super win for anyone wanting to do decentralized business using crypto-currencies.

Thanks for your enthusiastic comment. We are not currently working with Openbazaar but are most certainly examining all such platforms to inspire the creation of our own marketplace platform dedicated to Steem and Steem Dollars.